mon ami

[beheld_beauty]

Not much happens at the castle. It's the two of them and the magic. She studies. He wanders around. He's not very careful about standing behind things - he does when he remembers and there is something nearby, but it's plain that nothing about being visible in the less-than-fluffy nude bothers Beast except on her behalf.

Finally she excises an hour of study time to spend on being able to look at him without intervening furniture or flinching. She finds it's possible to do this in her mindscape, without having to use a notebook. She can zoom in deep into a rose petal, find a level of detail beyond which there are no patterns, and write, directly there. This isn't an ideal memory aid - if she looks later the words aren't exactly the same - but it's much faster for sheer processing, and the chosen modifications morph into the structure of the rose without special effort as soon as she's sure she wants them.

She behaves with more equanimity about his nudity after that. "You can stop trying to remember to hide behind things," she tells him.

Comments

[beheld_beauty]

"I would probably have thought about it anyway. Just in case. To have something to do, if nothing else."

[deslandes]

"I would never want to spend my days dreaming about a freedom I don't think I'll ever have."

[beheld_beauty]

"I've been here for weeks now, though."

[deslandes]

He shrugs, curling up more comfortably at her feet. "I guess I'm not entirely ready to believe in you yet."

[beheld_beauty]

"I'm strictly nonfictional," she assures him. Pet pet.

[deslandes]

"I believe you're there," he says, purring demonstratively. "That much is inarguable. But that you might free me... harder to let myself believe."

[beheld_beauty]

"I have no reason not to disenchant you if I can. The other avenue is trickier. Not impossible, as far as I know."

[deslandes]

"So it is not certain you can do either one in time," he says, "and I would rather not become comfortable with hope until I know."

[beheld_beauty]

"...Even if the curse becomes permanent, that just means there are ongoing effects that aren't directly disenchantable. Maybe I should keep some of the magic books and the dictionaries for the foreign languages under a shelter of some kind, out in the forest, so I can take them with me and keep studying if we hit the time limit and it sends me away, and then maybe I could do something. I'm not at all optimistic - but it might be that if I learned enough, I could - I don't know. The thing that seems most likely that I could one day be able to do in spite of all the supposed obstacles is kill you. I don't even know if I could do that. I don't know if you'd want me to."

[deslandes]

"...I'd want you to," he says softly.

[beheld_beauty]

"If the time limit comes due," Belle says, "and we're still stuck here then, I'll leave with all the books I can carry and drag, and I will work on it, and I'll try to anti-curse you where I couldn't un-curse you, and if that doesn't work I'll see if I can get you out of here - the other way. But let's hope it doesn't come to that."

[deslandes]

"We can hope," he agrees.

[beheld_beauty]

"Sadistic nut of a witch," mutters Belle, "who would take all this power to change the world and do nothing productive, not even pointless harmless whimsy, but - disproportionate absurd cruelty, out of all scale - when did that start to seem to her like a worthwhile use of pain and power -"

[deslandes]

"Don't ask me," snorts the Beast.

[beheld_beauty]

"I have no one else to ask," Belle points out.

[deslandes]

"Then you will never know the answer."

[beheld_beauty]

"Unless there is some more advanced version of that past-viewing spell. Or I learn to invent my own."

[deslandes]

"Until then," he agrees with a laugh.

[beheld_beauty]

"I should study," she sighs, looking down at him where he's sprawled before her, "I don't want to have to work out how to kill you if all else fails."

[deslandes]

"Go study, then."

[beheld_beauty]

She goes.

She studies.

She's really not making much progress in her curriculum. If she's going to have any prayer of disenchanting the place before the deadline, she's going to have to narrow her focus. She can't just study disenchantment - she has to be specific, cross from her starting point to her destination on a tightrope instead of insisting on building a whole bridge. She can fix the breadth of her knowledge later. Right now she has something very particular to get at.

She goes to have another look at the curse fondement.

[deslandes]

There it is, just the same as—

No. Wait.

Apparently the Beast was right about her being easy to love. There's a stream of deep violet power twisting and coiling around the outside of the power well, and its source is somewhere below her.

[beheld_beauty]

...Ah-hm.

Well, Belle can talk to him about that later, she doesn't want to have to cast the spell to let her see the details a second time. She takes careful notes, on everything, including the stream of violet. Does it look strong enough to carry his half of the disenchantment? The curse is designed to be broken by love; maybe it would be possible to subvert it with half the recommended dose and some more magical work...

[deslandes]

The dosage isn't the issue; the amount of power generated by how he feels about her would, it seems, be more than enough all by itself. The problem is structure: the spell is set up to accept a very specific thing, and without the two-way connection, there's just no budging it.

There are no books that talk about how to accomplish the kind of delicate surgery that would be needed to change the structure of the curse in the relevant way.

[beheld_beauty]

Dangit.

Well. She has many notes about the curse. She shaves off everything she can from the curriculum she's designed - disenchantments relating to anything not powered by Heart, disenchantments that are aimed at short-term curses, disenchantments that simply hasten programmed timed expiration.

She cuts down her estimate by about four weeks. This is not nothing, but it is not enough to be quite comfortable. Study study study. The next time the Beast wanders in she'll ask him when he was planning to tell her.